This invention relates generally to golf clubs, and more particularly to selective weighting of golf club heads, as in a set, to impart desired swing-feel and ball flight result relationships to the individual clubs in the set.
It is well known that different golfers have different requirements as respects golf clubs best suited to their techniques of play. Vertical club head approach angles and/or arcs, plus horizontal swing path directions and club head surface speed all combine with impact location to effect accuracy, ball flight characteristics and distance. Good golfers achieve accuracy and ball flight characteristics by their superior stroke patterns and faster stroke swing speed. Poor golfers tend to lack both and, for instance, tend to need lower weight position in the head for better trajectory results, i.e., high weight position in a head tends to keep the ball down.
Golf club makers have attempted to provide weighting characteristics to help different type golfers; however, such attempts lack the unusual advantages in structure function and result now afforded by the present invention.
Golf club makers can vary club characteristics and make tests on machines, attempting to show such clubs to be properly designed with respect to weight distribution for proper shot results. But such a correlation is accurate only for the machine impact patterns and the machine stroke, not for golfers who are similar in appearance and appear machine-like in personal swing habits but who are human in their mental and physical applications. Thus, golfers vary in emotional perception of each shot affecting their physical effort and end result. It should theoretically be possible for a golfer to find a perfect "fitting" club that worked just as he desired; however, because clubs are generally designed esthetically in sets for marketing purposes, each golfer cannot find a set of clubs each of which matches perfectly his own psychological and physical expectations. It is applicant's experience that it is not currently feasible, if possible at all, to find or assemble such a matched conventional set of clubs. Those that attempt to acheieve such a matched set do so with great effort and expense through trial and error, physical adjustment, and weight distribution modification.
Even so called "custom clubs" utilize conventionally designed club heads, shafts and grips, which results in a subjectively determined set of "conventional" clubs. The latter are based on the custom club fitter's personal fit and matching assumptions, not resulting from the golfer's actual shot/result requirements or with superior result adjustability.
In the past, attempts were made to affix weights to golf club heads so that club weighting could be adjusted by the golfer in an attempt to strike a golf ball or balls to best advantage. See for example U.S. Pat. No. to Bowser (440,379) in 1935, and U.S. Pat. No. to Belmont (3,979,122) issued in 1976, to Churchward (4,043,563) issued in 1977, and to Janssen (4,145,052) issued in 1979. However, no way was known to selectively adjust the weighting of golf club heads in multiple and different modes, so as to achieve desired ball travel and desired swing-feel relationships of clubs in a set, with heads typically having different ball striking face angularity. In this regard, the unique and advantageous methods and structures of the present invention were not known.